The Nine Lives of Carol
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Most people, perhaps, had only one life. But Carol Peletier had nine lives. Nine very different lives. (Ultimately a Caryl fic though there's other character involvement.)
1. The Girl Who Didn't Quite Fit In

**AN: So this is the first chapter to a nine chapter short-story. It's ultimately a Caryl story, but probably not as traditional as some. Other elements will be present as we go through the different lives of Carol. There's a little bit more information at the end. That's an AN that everyone needs to read if you're deciding whether or not you want to read this story (because I know some people are more sensitive than others about appearances/discussions of other ships).**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **This chapter gets a warning for the presence of Ed (though nothing abusive/graphic here) for anyone who might want it.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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The lavender Easter dress had been her favorite one out of any that she could recall. It was, perhaps, a little over the top in comparison to the other dresses around, but she favored the flowing skirt and the tight bodice. It made her feel feminine and light and _beautiful_. It didn't matter if her father had jokingly teased that she looked like an Easter egg in person or that her mother had suggested that she might have chosen her shoes a little more carefully to have matched better with the fabric.

None of that mattered to Carol. What mattered to her wasn't really how she _looked_ , it was how she _felt_.

She'd missed the big Easter picnic for the past three years. She'd been away at college on a scholarship and she'd found it too difficult to make it back home. Even though Spring Break should have allowed her such a freedom, it usually ended up that the week was one she used to work more. It was the perfect time for getting a good head start on all the papers that the end of the semester—approaching so quickly that she could _hear_ it coming—would demand from her. The library, after all, was absolutely abandoned.

But this was her last year. It was the year of her student teaching and her break had allowed her to come home—the prodigal child of the whole town since there weren't too many people from Stone Ridge that even went to college. She would be there for the picnic and she would go wearing the dress that she'd picked out and bought herself, without any input from her mother, to flaunt a little her own pride in her accomplishments.

When they got to the picnic, though, Carol quickly realized that things in town hadn't changed just because she'd gone to college. She wasn't returning as some kind of hero or inspiration for those around her. She was still the same person she'd always been, Carol Ann McAlister—the girl who didn't quite fit in.

And even the power of the lavender dress wasn't enough to make her feel less than invisible in the crowd.

Carol fixed her plate and wandered around, while her parents talked with people they knew from church, to look for some of her old classmates—people who really hadn't had much of an interest in her while she'd lived there and gone to school with them—but she soon found them to be fairly unreceptive. If they hadn't felt any real affection for her when they were all going to the same high school, they certainly didn't feel it now that she'd stepped away from her life there for a few years. While she'd been away trying to get a degree, most of them had gone on with their lives and, more than likely, spent their leisure time together reliving the glory days of high school.

Those days, honestly, hadn't really been glory days for Carol, so she had nothing to relive with them. She had no stories to share and she wasn't part of their stories. She was the girl on the outside of all their stories, in fact.

And she was the girl on the outside of their group gathering.

Knowing and accepting when she wasn't welcome—when she simply didn't fit in—was something Carol was good at. It was a skill all its own. She took her plate and, instead of interrupting anyone else's meal, she made her way across the grassy area of the park and chose a seat for herself in the shade of a tree. She sought out the cleanest looking spot, where grass was likely all she'd come into contact with to soil her dress at all, and she sat. With her plate in her lap, she picked at her food and watched everyone else from a distance.

She didn't fit in there. She never had.

Once it had bothered her. Once it had been the only thing she _wanted_. She wanted to be popular and well-liked. She wanted to be part of the groups of friends around her. She wanted to be _part_ of something instead of feeling like she was always just inserting herself into something to which she didn't really belong.

She fit in even less now, though, than she ever had.

And she realized that it didn't bother her as much as it once had. She was growing accustomed to it. She was accepting it.

She belonged to a different world than they did. She belonged, perhaps, to a world all her own. And, maybe, one day she'd find a place where she really felt like she fit. Maybe, one day, she'd find her own friends. Her own people.

A tribe, of sorts, that would accept her for exactly what she was.

Even if what she was just an over-freckled, red-head with frizzy hair that was eating alone in a purple dress that, more than likely, made her look like an Easter egg.

Maybe, one day, she'd find someone with whom to share her world.

"Carol Ann—always eating alone," Carol heard. She raised her face and shielded her eyes from the sun to see who had snuck up on her, coming from behind the tree. She smiled.

"Ed?" She asked.

"Been gone so long you don't remember me?" Ed asked. "Got that many boyfriends away at your fancy ass University?"

Carol's heart pounded in her chest. Ed Peletier had been the closest that Carol had ever come to having a high school sweetheart. They had eaten lunch together a few times. They'd gone out to eat once. They'd seen a movie together and Ed had put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her in the dark during the closing credits. She couldn't remember the movie, but she could remember the strange flutter in her stomach over that kiss.

But it had all ended rather abruptly when she'd told him that she'd been accepted to go to school and she was going. That wasn't really what Ed had in mind. Apparently he didn't think that he needed college and he certainly didn't think that she did. He wanted to get married, just like most of them did, and he wanted to raise a family. He didn't see any reason in delaying that, especially not since Carol wouldn't need education to have three or four kids. That was, if he was to choose to marry her.

He'd been mad—hot headed enough he'd punched a wall and stormed away from her—when she'd told him that she was leaving. He'd written her a letter, during her second semester, telling her that he was sorry for how he'd acted and that he wanted to see her again, but nothing more had come of it than that.

Carol still had the letter.

And she'd already forgiven him for getting mad. After all, she understood it. He'd only gotten mad because he'd felt threatened. He'd only gotten mad because he thought that, after going to college, it might bother her that he had chosen to go to work for his father instead. He'd only gotten mad because he'd thought it might mean that she didn't look at him the same way—that she looked down on him. And no man wanted to feel like a woman, especially not his sweetheart, was looking down on him.

Carol wasn't looking down on him at all. In fact, it was him that was looking down on her, literally, at the moment.

"Of course I remember you," Carol said. "It's been years, Ed."

"Too many," Ed said. "You're—you're lookin' good for yourself."

Carol smiled.

"You like my dress?" She asked. He hummed at her—grunted really—but nodded.

"Pretty," he said. It was the best kind of compliment she was going to get from Ed Peletier about a dress, but she'd accept it since it was the first compliment she'd gotten about it at all. Carol patted the ground beside her.

"You could sit with me," she said. "Then—I wouldn't have to eat alone."

Ed looked around, like he might be expecting someone to say something about it, and then he did settle down beside her. Ed was more popular than Carol was, and maybe that was owing to who his father was, but for some reason he'd taken a shine to her. He had other girlfriends, and Carol knew that, but he'd always told her that she was special. She was something different than them.

And Carol had to believe him because she'd always felt different, at least in some way.

Ed sat for a moment and produced a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one and offered the pack to Carol. She shook her head.

"You quit smoking?" Ed asked.

The truth was that Carol had never smoked. At least, she'd never smoked enough to really consider it a habit of hers. She'd done it, more than once, to try to fit in with everyone else, but it wasn't something she really enjoyed. In fact, every time she did it, she'd look at the others who were really enjoying it and feel a little bit more out of place.

It was just another reminder that she wasn't like them.

Ed didn't need to know all that, though. A simple white lie could handle this.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "Didn't like it. Makes my breath smell bad and—and I heard you can get wrinkles that way."

Ed laughed to himself and studied the cigarette.

"Better you don't smoke then," Ed said. "Don't want to mess up your face. But—all the same, I don't intend to stop."

Carol shook her head at him.

"You don't have to," Carol said. "I just—don't want to."

She put her plate to the side, an offering to the ants that would soon find it, and then she shifted around in the grass. Ed slid closer to her and dropped an arm over her shoulder just like he had in the movie theater. She held her breath for a moment, almost afraid that any sudden movement on her part or drawing attention to it might make him move.

"You got you a boyfriend?" Ed asked. "Someone you're dating up there?"

Carol swallowed.

Her life at college was as solitary as her life in Stone Ridge had ever been. She had her books to keep her company. There, like in high school, she really had no real enemies, but she couldn't say that she had too many real friends either. She simply existed—even if she felt that hardly anyone ever noticed her existence.

"No," she said. "Not one."

Ed smirked at her and when he spoke there was a touch more gruffness in his voice. He moved his arm, moving her whole body with it, and shook her playfully from side to side.

"You messin' with me, Carol Ann?" He asked. Carol smiled at the teasing. She shook her head at him. He only seemed more pleased. "Been waiting on me all this time?"

She hadn't exactly been waiting, there just hadn't really been any other opportunities. But Carol knew that men could be fragile and she didn't want to hurt Ed's feelings. She simply confirmed for him that she'd been waiting on him with a nod of her head and she sucked in her breath to keep from appearing too excited by his seeming interest in her.

"Have you been waiting on me?" She asked, curling her lip at him and arching her eyebrow. She knew that he hadn't. More than likely he'd had ten or fifteen girlfriends in her absence—and that was on top of the ones that he'd had while she was in town.

"Matter of fact? I have," Ed said. "Just how much longer you gotta be at that place anyway?"

Carol's heart thundered now in her chest. If he'd said anything else, she might not have heard it over the sound of her own rushing blood in her ears. She was almost dizzied by everything about Ed—by the thrill of finding out that, after all these years, he still cared what she was doing.

And he still cared when she was coming back.

"Just a couple of months," Carol said. "Just—finishing up student teaching. But—then I'll be done."

"A free woman?" Ed asked. Carol smiled and nodded. "Comin' back to Stone Ridge?" Carol hesitated to respond. She didn't want to say that there was really nothing in Stone Ridge for her—that she'd always felt really out of place there even if she had nowhere that she really felt _right_ —but she didn't have to say it because Ed seemed to read her mind. "Comin' back if—you had something to come back for? Someone? Say—a man that was asking for just a little bit of that _freedom_?"

Carol smiled at him and nodded again, barely able to breathe for just a moment over everything she dared to think that he was insinuating. She continued to nod until he laughed at her.

"Damn it, Carol Ann, you look like a dashboard dog," Ed commented. Carol laughed, but he soon stopped her laughter by covering her lips and kissing her. And even though they weren't hidden by the darkness of the movie theater this time, Carol wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.

 _She'd be free but, hopefully, not for long_.

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 **AN: So each chapter of this story will be a "life" of Carol. There are nine chapters because we know, as she tells Daryl, she has nine lives. This is the first chapter (complete). Given that there will be a number of her experiences (and lives) that will be explored, it should be expected that other relationships will appear here. Ultimately it's a Caryl story, but that's not the only thing that's going to be discussed. If you know me at all, however, you know that I don't do much smut. I don't foresee anything like that with any other character, though there may be mentions of sexual relationships, but I will put a "warning" at the beginning of chapters for anyone who may need it.**


	2. Broken Woman

**AN: Here's the second of nine chapters. Carol's second life.**

 **There's a warning here for Ed. Nothing really graphic, but it's Ed.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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She married a man who proposed to her at the end of an evening—an evening when she was wearing a lavender dress that made her feel beautiful. She married the man—who said he wanted a little of her freedom—five months later in a white dress that made her feel beautiful and in a ceremony that made her feel like a queen.

Queens fall sometimes.

And the man wanted more than a little of her freedom.

The lavender she wore now didn't make her feel beautiful at all. Not in its many hues across her face—a face he said was no longer pretty. It was hard to be pretty, though, after years of swollen eyes and lips, breaks and cuts and burns.

The woman that she saw in the reflective surfaces everywhere and anywhere was a woman that Carol didn't know. They were intimate with each other, since they shared the same aching body and the same broken heart, but they were strangers. She wasn't the kind of woman that Carol _wanted_ to know. She wasn't the kind of woman that Carol respected.

But she was Carol now, and Carol was her.

Isolating her hadn't been difficult at all for Ed. Isolation had been part of Carol's life—a trademark to some degree—for as long as she could recall. Even as the person she used to be, a person she found some pride in once upon a time, Carol had lived a mostly solitary existence. Marrying Ed had been a promise that she would never have to be alone again. She'd share everything in her life with this man—this one wonderful man that wanted to make her the queen of his world.

And for a while, it was true.

They moved not long after they married. His father's company had a job in upstate Georgia that came open. It could be a big move for Ed. He'd be in a position of power—Ed's favorite kind of position—and he could save his back from the manual labor that the lower rungs of his father's company were subjected to. He took the job with Carol's blessing, not that she imagined now that he was ever really asking for it, and they packed up. They left together, man and wife, on the adventure that would be their life together.

The isolation was easy. Carol had always had a hard time making friends and it wasn't any easier in a new town where nobody knew her and nobody had much interest in getting to know her. Small towns worked that way—the outsider was only interesting for a moment. And Carol had nothing really to hold anyone's interest very long.

In the small town of Winston, she was the wife of Ed Peletier. Gone was Carol Ann McAlister. Carol Peletier was all anyone would know there. She stayed at home, her education going to waste, because Ed didn't think it was proper for a woman to work outside the home—and he had plenty for her to do to keep her busy. She knew only the wives of the men that worked with Ed, and she only knew them under circumstances surrounding Ed. They envied her the status of stay-at-home and told her how lucky she was. Ed was a good man. Her life was an easy life.

And she hid from them, as much as she could, the physical evidence of how broken the woman with the easy life felt sometimes. But it wasn't too hard to hide. Few people tried to come into her solitary world—a world she really only shared with her husband.

She wanted to believe that, just like she thought Carol McAlister was in there—the woman that she once was—the Ed that her husband had been was in there too. She wanted to believe that, somehow, he'd eventually come back to her. He'd see what it was like in her world, and he'd be moved to help her—to love her like he promised. He'd be better for her as she strived to be better for him.

When her father died of a heart attack and her mother followed soon after from what they all assumed to be grief, Carol knew that she was truly alone. She was truly changed. They had stayed out of her married life—a woman leaves her father's home for her husband's—but as long as they were alive, she was still their daughter. With them gone, every piece of her old self fell away. She was no longer their daughter. She was only Ed's wife.

A broken woman. Even Ed called her that.

Everything had a place and everything in its place. The dinner was ready—pot roast made from Ed's request that morning. The laundry was done and his shirts were pressed. He'd be ready for work the next day before the old day had even passed away. The house was clean and Carol was dressed nicely—properly—as he would say that she should be.

She sat very still, on the sofa, and waited for him to come home. And when she heard his car in the driveway, she got up and she walked to the door to greet him and to take his coat as soon as he came through the door.

She could only hope that he came through the door today, as he did some days, with a smile on his face and praise for a good day at work on his lips. Nobody at work knew how much Carol's life hinged on what happened there.

Ed came through the door, but it was clear that he was already agitated. Not a good day at all. He took his coat off and offered it to Carol, but he barked out an order for a "drink" before he even gave her time to hang it.

"Whisky or beer?" Carol asked. The choice would tell her a good deal about the day.

"Whisky," Ed said. "What's that smell?"

Carol rushed to fix the drink. The faster and better she did her job, the more chance she had of soothing over his bad day.

"Pot roast," she said, smiling at him. "Just like you wanted. They even had the little red potatoes? So I didn't have to just cut up the big ones. I know you like it better with the little..."

"It's too damn hot in this house for pot roast," Ed responded. "Damn it, Carol. You're trying to give me a heat stroke?"

Carol might have pointed out that she'd neither changed the thermostat nor planned the meal, but that would only provoke a fight that she was trying to avoid.

"I have some chicken salad leftover," Carol said. "I could make you a sandwich? Something—cool?"

She offered Ed the drink and he eyed her. She straightened her back a little. She was prepared for what that look could mean, but she wasn't going to let him know it. Sometimes it worked in her favor to cower, but more often than not it didn't. She didn't feel like cowering—not right now.

It must have worked. He smiled at her. Smirked, really, but it was better than it could have been. He took the drink in one hand. The other hand came toward her face and she willed herself not to flinch. He touched her cheek, brushed his thumb over it. Then he kissed her and she let out her breath. She felt her body relax.

When he pulled away it was clear it wasn't over, though.

"Damn shame when a man works all day to put food on his table," Ed said. "Works all day to provide for his wife so she doesn't have to work. And he comes home to what? To _sandwiches_."

"I could make you something else," Carol offered, somewhat following him as he made his way to the living room to sit in the chair that, if she was lucky, he'd stay in until he was ready for bed.

"Sandwich is fine," Ed said. "You'd just fuck up anything else you made. You remember Jim Briggs?"

Carol nodded and hummed.

"Got a promotion," Ed said. He looked at her. "You gonna make me that sandwich?"

Carol nodded and went to the kitchen. She started to make the sandwich, trying to pay attention to the details that he would find important. She decided to make two. He'd appreciate the extra "care" that went into it.

"Can you hear me?" Ed called.

"I can," Carol responded.

"I asked if you remember Jim," Ed said. "Got a promotion."

"That's good," Carol responded. "That's good for him, isn't it?"

"I don't give a damn if he got a promotion," Ed said. He laughed to himself about something. Carol would bring the whisky bottle with her when she brought the sandwiches. He'd be expecting her to refill his drink soon enough. He was laughing and, with any luck, he'd drink himself into a happy stupor. It could be a good night still. "Talked to him today, though. Had a lunch. Not a real good one. Shouldn't have gotten that new little place in town to cater. Place makes chicken that could pass for jerky. Roast chicken that's as dry as roofing shingles." He hummed. "Not like your chicken."

Carol smiled to herself. Ed liked her chicken. Her roast chicken was his favorite. It could be the perfect apology for almost anything.

"You want me to make you some chicken?" Carol asked. "For tomorrow? A roast chicken with—carrots? Baby potatoes? String beans? Ed?"

He hummed again. She gathered up the plate with the now-made sandwiches, stopped by to gather up the bottle of whisky and a napkin, and she brought it all to him. He let her tuck his napkin into his shirt and refill his glass before he started to eat the sandwiches.

Carol sat on the couch, nearest his chair, and watched as he ate with satisfaction.

"Would you like me to make you a roast chicken tomorrow?" Carol asked. Ed hummed. He nodded as he chewed. There was a small sense of satisfaction that crawled through Carol's body. She could be a good wife, sometimes. Sometimes? She was the best wife that Ed could ask for. Sometimes? She was good at her job.

"What's Jim's wife's name?" Ed asked, his mouth full. He washed down some of the sandwich with a swallow of the whisky.

"Katherine?" Carol asked. "Katie."

"Katherine," Ed agreed, nodding his head. "Katherine. Talked to Jim today at the luncheon and he said—said he and Katherine? Expecting a kid. Second one for them. Second kid in three years. They've only been married three. That's what he said."

Carol felt her blood run cold. She couldn't even say good for Jim and good for Katherine. She couldn't feel happy about anyone's news that they were expecting because she knew—all too well—what it meant for her. It was a reminder that she and Ed had been married eight years now. They should've had three kids—maybe she'd even be expecting a fourth. But their house was empty. And she'd been hopeful for the first year, even the first two, but now she cried every time she realized that another month was going to drift past and still their house was empty—and they wanted children.

Carol didn't respond in any way. She just sat there and tried not to give into her desire to cry. Nobody else's good news should be reason for her tears, but it was.

"You hear me?" Ed asked.

Carol nodded.

"Said they're having another kid," Ed said. "Second one in three years and Jim asks me what about me?" He laughed, but it wasn't a comforting laugh to Carol. "What about me, he asks. And well, I've got nothing to tell him except—hell, everybody knows I married a broken ass woman. A broken ass woman..."

Carol's heart pounded in her chest. Ed's speech continued and it wasn't likely to stop until he was passed out. He might not touch her tonight. If she played her cards right. He might not lash out at her in anger. Not physically. If she played her cards right? He'd keep drinking that whisky as she fed it to him until he was damn near ready to fall out of the chair that he sat in. If he drank past the angry part, he'd drink himself right into the soft part—the broken part—the part where he seemed to love her more than he ever did before.

The part where he seemed to need her—and sometimes he reminded her of that. She needed him. He was all that she had. But he'd remind her, in those moments, that he needed her too.

And she'd take him to bed and he'd pass out. Alka-Seltzer, water, and Ibuprofen by the bed for the morning.

"Broke ass woman can't get anything right. Can't cook hardly a damn thing worth eating. Go looking for a clean shirt and it's never the right damn ones she's got all lined up in the closet. Iron more wrinkles into the damn things than she gets out, I told him," Ed continued, Carol blocking his voice as much as she could to keep his words distant. "I told him—broke ass woman. But the worst damn thing is that all she's gotta do is open her damn legs for us to have a kid—hell, happens every day—and can't even do _that_ right. That's how you know what you've done picked out..."

But even if he didn't touch her with his hands, he'd never reach the passing out point, the needing point, and the broken point without hurting her. Carol closed her eyes to the words, pretending they didn't sting as much as any slap, and hoped that he'd just keep drinking until he needed her—broken woman or not.


	3. The Keeper of Miracles

**AN: Here we go, another chapter. I thank you for the support from those of you who are reading. I know that it isn't an easy story to read, and in many places it won't be, but it's something I'm interested in exploring. It means a lot to know that some of you are interested in reading it. There is a happy ending, if that helps anyone.**

 **Warning for Ed this chapter.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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 _No. She's fine here with me. She can stay with me._

Carol had said that line a dozen times before she got her newborn home from the hospital. Less than forty eight hours in the place and she felt like she was offered to hand her over as many times.

Well-meaning women that Carol spoke to, particularly gathering around her at Ed's company picnic and drawn by the size of her belly, had told her any number of horror stories about what having her baby would be like. They described pain to her—pain that wouldn't stop when the baby was there like she may have been led to believe. They described exhaustion beyond her comprehension. They promised her that she would be desperate to hand the baby over, grateful when the nurses offered to take her, for just a little rest. In short, in the name of "preparing" her, they'd had Carol swallowing back fear for four weeks as she waited for something she was sure she'd never live through—and that didn't even begin to cover the nightmare that some of them painted her first days home with baby to be like.

But Carol really found none of it to be true. She soon realized that none of these women knew her. Not really. And they had no idea of what her life was like. They had no idea of what she was capable of. Carol, honestly, had no idea of what she was capable of—not until she became Sophia's mother.

None of the horror stories she'd heard along the way provided even the slightest preparation for the absolute _bliss_ she felt surrounding everything about her daughter.

Ed had been ecstatic when she first told him that she was expecting. Suddenly it seemed he was going to be the husband that he'd promised to be in the beginning. There was nothing that was too good for her. There was that he wouldn't try to do for her. And every chance he got, he took her places to tell everyone that his wife—his wonderful, beautiful wife—was going to give him a son. After all those years, they were finally having the family that they planned in the beginning.

A little into her sixth month of pregnancy, they got the news that their bouncing baby boy was, in fact, a daughter. Carol remembered the night because she'd said something—something that was apparently horrible and unforgiveable though she couldn't bring the words or the circumstances to memory—and Ed had slapped her. After his kindness, the slap stung worse than any she could recall before. He'd left, gone out somewhere to have a few drinks, and when he returned, he'd brought flowers. He'd brought a dozen apologies and twice as many promises that it wouldn't happen again. After all, they knew now that she wasn't broken. Not the way he'd thought before. One child proved it and a son, if they were lucky, would follow soon after their daughter's arrival.

In fact, Ed's decision to be devoted to Carol through the whole thing only wavered again when it was time for the baby to be born. The whole process, apparently, was too long for him. Carol was actually pleased when a nurse—apparently irritated by Ed's behavior and having privately asked for Carol's blessing—told Ed it was fine for him to leave, if he wanted, and someone would contact him when the baby arrived. While many fathers might have found such an offer off-putting, Ed gladly accepted it and left Carol to the work of delivering their daughter—and she enjoyed the attention of the nurse over Ed's complaints.

And she _had_ been exhausted, maybe that wasn't a lie, but she'd also felt more _energized_ than she could explain. Suddenly she had, in her arms, the most perfect little miracle that she'd ever seen.

And that miracle was hers to keep after she'd waited so long for her. She belonged to Carol. There would never be another person who would be blessed with being the mother of that particular little gift sent directly from Heaven. Sophia was Carol's personal little miracle.

So there was no need for the nurses to continually ask if they might take her for Carol to get some rest. She could rest fine with her daughter there, resting too. She would keep her with her, close to her. And she vowed to her, even if the infant couldn't understand it, that she would keep her safe and well-cared for as long as there was breath in her body and the power to do so.

Ed's devotion to the child didn't last as long as Carol might have liked. Maybe he'd held out some hope that she would be born the son that he wanted, but once there was no question—Sophia was his daughter—he'd immediately shown a certain amount of dislike for her. He'd taken Carol home, the baby in tow, but he'd had relatively little to do with her. She cried too much. She ate too often. She was never satisfied and she devoured too much of Carol's time and devotion when that time was better spent catering to Ed's needs instead of Sophia's.

Ed's only interest, it seemed, was in knowing exactly how long they had to wait before he could expect for them be announcing the arrival of another child—one that would, hopefully, be far less disappointing to him.

But nothing about Sophia disappointed Carol.

And she determined to keep the girl safe and happy, however she had to do it. If it meant wearing herself down in the process, she'd keep Ed satisfied. She'd find a way to give him everything he expected from her and then, with all that she had leftover, she'd give Sophia everything that she might need. Everything that she deserved.

By the time that Sophia was eight months old, it became clear that Carol would play an even bigger role in protecting her daughter than she really imagined before. When her active and crawling daughter, presumably in her father's care for a moment while Carol got dinner out of the oven and ready to go to the table, knocked over a bottle that Ed had put on the floor instead of on the table, Carol heard the sounds of Ed's anger over the inconvenience rip through her. She moved the dish from the oven to the top of the stove as quickly as she could and, without really knowing why, purposefully grabbed a plate close to her and threw it at the floor.

And with the shattering of that dish, for the first time in her married life, Carol launched into purposefully provoking her husband into anger—anger toward _her_.

Though Carol hated that Sophia _saw_ and _heard_ what happened, as she would many times after that, Carol was grateful that she was able to keep Sophia from _experiencing_ the destructive nature of Ed's anger.

And she would always keep her from experiencing it. _Somehow_.

She'd promised Sophia that again, that night, while she sat rocking her long after Ed had passed out in their bed, and long after Sophia should've been asleep. But Sophia had just wanted a little more _mommy time_ and was probably anxious about the evening's events. So Carol stayed up with her and rocked her a little more than she had to while she ran through some of her own thoughts from the evening and some of the threats that she'd made—threats that were likely nothing more than empty threats.

Ed was probably right. She wouldn't make it without him. She needed him. Financially, she needed the support. He reminded her, when she dared to mention as something as bold as leaving him, that she wouldn't even begin to know how to get on her feet when she'd never been on them before—the downfall of going directly from her father's house to her husband's. He reminded her that, emotionally, she had nobody that she could depend on. There was nobody that cared about her. There was hardly anyone that even remembered she was alive, and there was certainly nobody that would miss her greatly if she weren't. She couldn't depend on Ed, either, most of the time, but even Ed was better than having absolutely nobody.

And Ed reminded her that, legally, Sophia was his daughter. He promised her that he would find a way, if she were to leave him, to have her declared unfit. Somehow, he would keep her from having Sophia. He might not want the little girl himself, and he might not care for her with any great affection, but he would do anything and everything he had to do to be sure that Carol never kept her—not if she left him.

Ed's threats, however, weren't half as paralyzing to Carol in the moment as her own simple fear of failure. Failure, now, was not an option for her. Because failure—however it might come about—wasn't just failure for Carol any longer. Her failure would affect Sophia, and Carol existed to support and protect her daughter.

Her failure wasn't an option. Even if she was the only person who ever understood that the decisions she made, though they weren't always the ones she _wanted_ to make, were the best decisions she could make with the resources that she had.

"It's very late," she cooed, rocking her dozing daughter in her arms. "It's past your bedtime. And tomorrow you're going to be cranky. We don't want to be cranky—do we?" Sophia looked at Carol with half-closed eyes. Ed would say that Sophia had his eyes—but Carol just saw them as Sophia's. Ed never looked at her the way that her daughter looked at her. Ed looked at her like she caused all the problems in the world. Sophia looked at her like she could fix them. And for Sophia? She _would_. "You're very sleepy," Carol insisted. "Even if—if you don't think so? Even if—you think you want to stay up? You don't want to stay up. Your tummy is full. And you're so warm. You're sleepy and you will like your dreams a lot, sweetheart. And you can tell me all about them later. In the morning."

Carol eased her body out of the chair, ignoring the aches that made her breath catch in her chest. She forced a smile, for the benefit of her almost dozing daughter. She didn't want her last visions, before she drifted off to sleep, to be ones of her mother making unpleasant faces. She leaned her face close to Sophia and reminded her that she loved her. She eased the baby into the crib, wound up her mobile, and offered her the pacifier that she'd lose not even a half hour after she dozed off. Carol stood over the crib for a few minutes, within Sophia's line of vision, and waited. It didn't take long before the little girl succumbed to sleep and closed her eyes to Carol.

Carol checked her monitor and left the room. She made her way to the bathroom, ignored her reflection in the mirror while she went about her business, and then she slipped into her bedroom and changed into the clothes that she would sleep in.

In the bed, Ed was already asleep—still passed out. Carol slid in next to him as carefully and quietly as she could after she assured herself that the monitor beside the bed was on. She held her breath when she heard him stir and she willed herself not to move when he wrapped an arm around her waist.

When he spoke, his breath smelled like the soured drinks he'd had.

"You ain't going nowhere," Ed said.

Carol let out the breath she was holding.

"I'm not," she said.

"I knew you weren't," Ed said. "You can't. Can't do it on your own. Don't have the balls." Carol hummed and he tightened his hold on her. He had no idea what it took to live through her daily life. It was outside of his comprehension. She shifted a little to keep some small distance between them in the bed. "Can't let her be a brat. Gotta stop it before it starts too bad. Not my job to follow around after her and make sure she acts right."

Carol swallowed.

"She's eight months old, Ed," Carol said. "She doesn't know..." She stopped. To continue, and not to tread carefully, would just renew the argument and they wouldn't get anywhere anyway. "Are you going to feel that way when..."

"When?" Ed pressed.

Carol sighed.

"When it's your son?" Carol asked.

Ed went quiet, not an altogether common occurrence for him.

"Something you and I need to talk about?" Ed asked.

Carol's heart picked up speed. In all honesty? There was nothing that she knew of, but that didn't mean that she couldn't take the opportunity to hit Ed where it hurt—even if it made her stomach turn. It wasn't a blatant lie, after all. She shifted a little, pressing her face deeper into her pillow.

"I don't know," she said quietly. "But—after tonight? I wouldn't imagine there is, Ed." Ed didn't respond. More silence from him. It was almost unprecedented. "But don't worry about it, Ed," Carol added. She patted his hand as it draped across her body. "It's not your job to worry about it."

And it wasn't Ed's job to worry about it. Not about Sophia, and not about any other little miracle that might come into the world through their less-than-perfect union.

It was Carol's job. She was Mother. She was the Keeper of the miracles.


	4. Pheonix

**AN: Here we are, another little chapter.**

 **No warning for this one, but it's the first time we see Daryl. Please note that I somewhat play around with canon here.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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All that she was before was gone.

All her memories were just that, memories.

The voices had faded. The smells of this world no longer brought to mind the memories of the past one. Sensations of touch were gone and her eyes didn't see, quite as clearly as they once had, faces that had been part of her.

It had all fallen away—lost along the roads they travelled. It had begun to unwind itself at a rock quarry outside of Atlanta and, once the string had snagged somewhere, it had continued until there was nothing left of her. There was nothing left of Carol at all.

Her husband, though no great loss to her at this point, was dead. Her daughter—the miracle she was responsible for keeping safe—was no longer hers to hold. And Carol, as she knew herself, had followed after.

As proof of her death, her grave was located near the fence line. She'd been out once to see it. She'd stood, for a moment, and said a solemn goodbye to the friends lost in the other fresh graves. And she'd lingered, even after she'd bid them farewell, to say goodbye to one very special friend.

She'd said goodbye to Carol. She laid her to rest and she left her there in the dirt of a Georgia prison yard.

The woman who walked away from the grave wasn't the woman that they'd pretended to bury there. She was someone new. Her heart was caught between the two selves, but her spirit had chosen to go on, as free as it could be.

She was reborn. She rose to live again in a different life. Her weakness was left behind. Everything about herself that she'd wanted to be rid of so many times before was left behind.

 _She didn't linger on the parts of herself that she'd hoped to keep. Those were gone, too, and there wasn't time in this world for lingering on a past that couldn't be recuperated._

The Cherokee Rose that he'd left on her grave, something nobody else in the prison would have even noticed, told her that he'd been there. He'd come to pay his respects to her. He'd come to say goodbye to her. The rose, when he left it there, had a very different meaning than when he'd brought her the first.

The first had been for her tears, of which she'd cried many. It had been the hope that she would find something that was precious to her.

The second had been for his tears, which she had never seen but knew existed. It had been the hope that he would find something that was precious to him.

She never asked him, like her former self might have, if he'd found what he was looking for, but the way he'd held her in the moments when she'd felt her old life slipping away—and the way he'd smiled at her when he saw the strength of her new life flowing into her body—told her that maybe he had.

Maybe he just didn't know it yet.

Each new _self_ brought with it all the knowledge of the former ones, and Carol didn't know how many lives he'd been through. She hadn't asked him. Even though he'd asked her, in his own way.

"Thought you were dead," he said. "Like Lori. T. Lost in the _tombs_."

She smiled at him. She concealed the shiver that had run through her at the mention of the location where she'd sat, waiting to die, overcome by her claustrophobia until her body had lost even the strength to panic.

"I told you," she replied. "It's our home now..."

He shook his head at her. Just the gesture had been enough for her to understand all the words that he didn't bother saying. The look in his eyes spoke to her. The prison wasn't what they all wanted to call a home, but it was the best that this world was going to offer them. It was the best that it had offered them so far.

And they could make it a home.

In her past life, Carol had been a homemaker, even with very little that felt like _home_ to work with, so she was confident she could do it again in this one.

"I thought it was a tomb too," Carol told him, agreeing with his sentiments. "Until you found me."

She earned a soft smile from him. A smile from him was a prize that was greater than most she could've earned from anyone else. He didn't give them out freely, but he always seemed to reserve one or two for her. He nodded at her, chewed at his lip—a nervous habit no doubt picked up in a past life. He'd had at least one. He wore it heavy on his shoulders. She'd seen the scars that were evidence that he'd survived it. He'd at least been reborn once.

Maybe it had happened the day he'd nearly given his life his one shred of _hope_ that he could be the one to recover her miracle for her.

"I'm glad you came back," Carol said sincerely. "Back to all this—back to..." She'd hesitated. A piece of _her_ leftover—recycled—from her former lives. She'd hesitated because she didn't want to say too much. She didn't want to assume too much. "Back to—all we can make it," she said, deciding not to make the conversation about them at all.

There was time for that. He needed the time.

And even in a world where there was so very, very little time—she'd give him the time that he needed.

And he gave her some hope. Just a little sliver of it—like a tiny glimmer of light coming through—but she'd take it.

"You too," he said. He hummed. "Not the first time I..." Now it was Daryl who stopped.

"You?" Carol pressed. He shook his head at her.

"Nothin'," he declared. "Just—glad you're alive."

Carol smiled at him.

"I'm like a cat," she said. "Nine lives."

He seemed genuinely amused at that. He didn't know it was true. Carol, honestly, didn't know if it was true either, but it seemed reasonable enough for her at the moment.

"Nine lives?" He asked. Carol nodded to confirm that he'd understood her correctly. He chewed his lip a moment and contemplated such a statement. "What life you on now?"

Carol shrugged and smiled.

"At least—four," she said.

He laughed, getting true amusement out of it for a just a split second, and then he nodded.

"That's alright, then," he teased. "Long way to go."

Carol sucked in a breath and nodded at him. She'd come a long way—but there was still a long way to go. A very long way to go.

From that day forward, Daryl would tease her about her nine lives. He'd stop and ask her, especially after a scare, how many she had left. She would tease him back, always answering with the same thing. She was still on number four. It got her, more than once, an odd expression from him. He'd shake his head and go about whatever he was doing, but Carol knew it was because he didn't fully understand what she meant when she said that she had nine lives.

He counted the lives as brushes with death. He wanted to count each of them as a time when she cheated, just barely even, the Grim Reaper out of a day's work. But if Carol was counting those brushes, she assumed that she'd spent many more than nine lives. What she meant was something entirely different. What she felt inside of her was something entirely different.

It wasn't something that she could explain, and she wasn't entirely sure that he was ready to understand it.

All that she was before was gone.

Not entirely. Never entirely. She always carried bits and pieces of it around with her, splinters of her old self that stuck in her soul, but she wasn't who she was back then.

She was something new.

And she believed, even if she was wrong, that she was something better. Or, at the very least, she _could_ be something better.

She promised herself that she wouldn't be weak this time around. She wouldn't be the woman that, somehow, got trapped under someone's shoe and spent her time there wondering exactly how she'd gotten herself in that position. She promised herself that she wouldn't be on the outside any longer. She wouldn't spend this life looking at everyone from a distance and wishing she could be part of their world.

She would let them into her world, and she would come into theirs. She wouldn't be alone.

And already she had him. Even if he didn't say it. Even if she never acknowledged, out loud, that she knew it. The truth was still the truth. She had him, and he had her.

And she would lend her strength to the group. She'd lend her strength to her new family. Together, they'd all move forward in this new world and they'd build the home that they dreamed of building together.

She put the strengths she already had to good use. She cleaned and she cooked and she cared for those around her. They were strengths, perhaps, that some of the others glossed over when they saw her, but they recognized them—even if they didn't acknowledge them—whenever their stomachs were full and their clothes weren't stiff with dirt and grime. They were thankful for her strengths—even if they never thought about it—when their beds were welcoming and the things they needed somehow found their way to their cells.

And she built new strengths for her new self.

She learned to fight the Walkers, as ferociously as anyone else, which threatened their lives, even if the others barely acknowledged her skill. She learned to be as comfortable with a gun as she was with a blade.

And she dug down deep within herself—deep among the splinters of her old lives—and found the strengths that she'd had all along but never even knew were there. She pulled them out, dusted them off, and marveled at all the strength she'd never even realized she carried deep inside her. She'd always taken it for granted, but it had served her well in her past lives. And it would serve her well in her new one.

When she loved, she loved ferociously. She could do anything for someone she loved—no matter the pain she had to endure for it to be done. She could last through anything with only the slightest hope to hold onto that, someday, circumstances may be better. She could survive. She'd been doing it all along. Because she didn't have to fear the death of herself. She would simply be reborn into something different. A new version of herself.

And eventually, the others saw that. Eventually, they recognized her strengths. Eventually, they invited her in to be a part of them—wholly a part of them.

"We want you on the council," Rick said.

"There are other people who would be better," Carol argued. "Someone else can do it."

Rick stood there, unshaken by her dismissal of his proposal.

"Yeah," he said. "You're right. There are other people that can do it, but nobody that would be better. We want you on the council. You've been with us since the beginning. You know—how this place works. You know how we work. You—make good decisions."

Carol stared at him. She waited for something—a "but" perhaps or something else to discredit what he'd said—but nothing else came.

"I make decisions about laundry," Carol said. "I make decisions about—about water and rations and how far a run will get us."

"And we need to consider those things," Rick agreed. "Sometimes those are the things we forget. But—without them? We're not going to get very far if we don't think about how long our food's going to last or what we really need the most."

"What kinds of decisions?" Carol asked.

"All of them," Rick responded. "Whatever it is."

"How many people are on the council?" Carol asked.

Rick shook his head.

"We haven't decided," he said. "Not yet. Not sure. But—it was unanimous. We want you on the council."

Carol started to reject the position again. She had no thirst for power. She had no desire to be in control of other people's lives. She wanted to help them. She wanted to support them. But she didn't want to control them.

But even as she started to shake her head, Rick interrupted her.

"Daryl put your name in," Rick said. "And—I trust his judgment. I trust you, Carol. Since the CDC? You've come a long way. We've all come a long way, but..."

He broke off and shook his head at her again.

"Can we count on you?" Rick asked. "For the good of—this place? For the good of everyone?"

Carol nodded, this time without hesitation. Before she would have hesitated. Before she would have rejected the position until it was no longer offered to her. Before she would have been terrified of the responsibility that any of it might have meant for her. She would have been afraid to step into that role. She would have been afraid to step into any role. She would have preferred to stay on the outside.

But she wasn't the same woman that she'd been before. That woman was gone. Her grave wasn't too far from the fence line.

Now Carol was born again, risen from the ashes of her current self, and she wasn't going to back down from this—from any situation where she was needed.

She was stronger than that now.

"I'm in," Carol said.

Rick smiled at her.

"Tell Daryl," Rick said. "He'll be glad to hear it."

Carol smiled as much to herself as she did at Rick.

"He already knows," she said. She didn't bother to explain, in response to his puzzled look, her words. She had work to do, and there wasn't time to waste.


	5. The Fallen

**AN: Here we go, the fifth chapter of nine.**

 **Tyreese features in this chapter. There is some discussion about the possible development of feelings for each other, over time and based on a certain set of hypothetical circumstances, but there's nothing that really should be difficult for anyone to handle.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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 _Outcast._

It was a familiar position for Carol. This time, though, it was worse than it had ever been before. Not only was she alone, on the outside of everything and everyone that she knew, she was a _true_ outcast. She'd been cast out of the prison by Rick—the judge, the jury, the executioner—into a world where it seemed like nothing could save someone alone.

 _But she wasn't sure how much she wanted to be saved. Or if she was even worth saving._

Carol had known, the whole time that Rick drove her to the house, that he was going to leave her. He didn't know her well enough to know that her intuition was strong. She was good at knowing when people were lying. She was good at knowing when something was about to happen to her. She was good at buying herself just a little time to prepare—if there was anything that could be done to prepare. Her life had taught her these things. Her life had taught her to read the enemy well, especially when the enemy was someone that she'd once, however foolishly, trusted to be a _protector_.

Nobody knew where she was. She'd left with Rick, alone, and he'd left her there. He wouldn't tell anyone, either, where he'd left her.

And Carol wasn't sure that anyone would come looking even if they knew.

She wasn't sure that she wanted them to come.

Daryl might. Daryl always seemed to be looking for her. No matter how many times he found her, he seemed to still be searching for her. Missing her was a comfortable place for Daryl—because he didn't seem to know what to do with himself when she wasn't gone to miss. Carol was giving him time, though, to work things out for himself. It seemed, though, that they'd simply run out.

 _Carol had run out of time._

Rick could cast her out of his own personal Eden, but he couldn't make her _stay_ out. She was going back. She was going to get the girls that she'd promised to guard. She'd promised, as a dying request, to care for them as her own and that's what she was going to do. She was going to tell Daryl that she was leaving. Whether he came with her, making a decision to do something about her presence, or he chose to stay there and _miss_ her was up to him. She was going to tell him.

 _And she was going to confess her sins._

She killed them and everyone still trying to solve the mystery deserved to know the truth. Not in cold blood. Never in cold blood. But Carol had been the one to kill them both. The virus was spreading. Every day, every _hour_ , it was claiming more and more lives. Just like the virus that turned them all into monsters when they died—and sometimes before they even had the luxury of dying—the virus was going to continue claiming them all one by one. She couldn't stop the virus. There were too many people already infected.

But she could end suffering. She could stop suffering before it was dragged out too long. That's what she'd done. She'd taken on the role that, maybe, wasn't hers to take on, and she'd decided to end their suffering.

Rick had cast her out for that decision. He'd cast her out for taking something like dominion over the lives of others. He would, alone, condemn her to a short life of solitude and alienation for making the decision to end the lives of others. But Carol didn't fault him his decision. She welcomed the punishment. The things she had done—the things she'd felt _compelled_ to do for the group that she'd _believed_ she was becoming part of—haunted her.

After they were dead, Carol burned the bodies as completely as gasoline and fire would allow. It was no disrespect to the dead—though the dead was disrespected daily now with less concern than they'd ever shown swatting flies. She burned them because, though it wouldn't _stop_ the virus, at least having their bodies burnt wouldn't _aid_ the virus's spreading like burying them in the ground would—leaving their poison to leak into their water and contaminate the very food they needed to survive.

She never got close to the prison again, though. It seemed she'd been cast out just in time. The prison was lost when she attempted to return to it. Most of it was burning. That which was still standing would offer no home to anyone except the Dead. Carol watched it burn, for a moment, and wondered if she'd have survived if she had been there.

And then she'd accepted her fate and she'd left. She was, it seemed, marked to be alone in the world since the very moment she was born. She'd fought it, but it had never worked in her favor. The time had come to simply embrace her solitude.

She would have, too, if he didn't _need_ her as much as he did.

He couldn't make it alone. He certainly couldn't make it alone with three little girls in tow. He needed her. And though she wanted to reject the feeling entirely, she needed him too.

She almost accepted his proposal when he'd made it. The idea of staying there—in such a picturesque little world that seemed so entirely outside of the world that they now—almost overtook Carol. What reason did they have to leave? Why would they choose to move on?

There, in the little farmhouse just beside the Pecan Grove, they had everything they needed. The well that provided them water was, no doubt, quite deep. If they were lucky, it was also renewed with the rain that fell. There was no shortage of wood for fires to keep them warm in the winter. The house was sturdy and not in need of any immediate repair. It would provide them shelter for years. The land was good. It was fertile. It could provide them food in return for only a little sweat from both their brows. The property was fenced, and it seemed the Dead couldn't penetrate its defenses.

In peace, they could remain there.

The domestic moments of their first night there could be commonplace. Together they would work. They would share the burdens of life. They would reap the rewards, together, of their efforts. The girls would grow—all three of them—and they would _live_.

All of them would live in the magical bubble they seemed to have found that was just outside of the harsh reality of the world surrounding them. Carol could have the life that she had dreamed of before. Carol could be a mother. Blood meant nothing. She could try again, and pray this time for her success, at keeping her promise to be worthy of the role of a protector of young lives. She could come to love Tyreese, and she was sure that he could come to love her. He seemed to be a man that was practically _designed_ for love. He was a man who offered her hugs and comfort instead of his fists and open palms.

But something was holding her back. So much was holding her back.

She wondered, for a moment, if it was simply the fact that she didn't trust the happiness. She knew that it had to be a mirage. It wasn't real. It was only appearing, for a moment, to get her to lower her guard—her shield—and then the worst would come.

And if she were to love him? And he were to love her? She would have to be honest with him, because she would hope for the same from him. She would have to tell him the truth. And the truth might guarantee that he _never_ could love her—not even if he were a man designed to love.

Her hesitation to leap at his proposal had only bought enough time for Carol to realize, though, that she'd been right. They couldn't be happy in this world. Happiness didn't exist. Not for Carol.

Before the sun was set, they were shoveling the last of the dirt on the second grave. They marked them well and exchanged nothing more than a few glances with each other while they worked. There weren't any words to be said. They'd woken from the dream before either of them had the chance to drift to sleep. They wouldn't stay there, in the little house beside the Pecan Grove. They would move on because even if the Dead didn't drive them out of there, the ghosts soon would.

Sitting across from him at the table that night, the fire that had been warm and comforting and inviting the night before doing little to knock the chill off that Carol felt seeping into her bones, Carol knew that she still owed the man one thing. She owed him the truth. And when she told him, she was prepared for him to react by either casting her out once more—left to roam the world alone—or by killing her.

And at the moment, she wasn't sure which she preferred.

"It was me," Carol said. "I—I killed them. I killed Karen and David. They were—dying. Slowly. I went into the cell that night. I—I took a knife. I knew where to put it. I knew how to do it. I killed them." She watched his face twist up as emotions of anger and sorrow took turns fighting for dominance in his mind, each winning a little here and there. She was going to tell him the truth, though, no matter what. She was going to confess her sins to him. And then she would accept his judgment. "I dragged the bodies out. To the courtyard. I burned them."

He stared at her. Silence fell between them. Carol waited one tick—two ticks—three ticks—and still he said nothing. She swallowed down what was caught in her own throat to continue. She had confessed. Now she must explain herself. He was waiting for that. Or, at least Carol believed that he was waiting for it.

"They weren't getting any better," Carol said. "I thought I could stop the virus." She shook her head. No. That's not what she thought. She'd never believed that she could actually stop it. It was out of her control. "I thought I could keep from spreading it. So I burned the bodies."

Tyreese continued to stare at her.

Maybe he was wondering just what kind of person she was. Maybe he was trying to figure out just how far she would go. He'd watched her pull the trigger that day—the hardest thing she'd ever done in her life—but he couldn't believe that she'd _wanted_ to do it. He couldn't believe that she'd ever wanted to do half the things she'd done.

She did what she had to do to survive. She did what she had to do so _others_ could survive. She did what she could to end the suffering in a world that was full of suffering.

But she didn't _want_ to do the things that she did.

"Did she suffer?" Tyreese asked. Carol looked at him. She toyed with the gun resting on the table in front of her—the gun she'd invite him to use when he passed his judgment. "Karen?" He clarified. "Did she—did she suffer?"

Carol shook her head.

"She didn't know," Carol assured him. He nodded his head gently, but he didn't explain what the gesture meant. Carol pushed the gun toward him—the same gun that she'd pulled the trigger on hours before. "Kill me," she said. "If that's what you want to do? If that's what you need to do?"

Tyreese reached a hand out. He rested it over the offered gun. Carol braced herself, trying to decide if she felt that she should even fight it. But then he surprised her. He moved the gun to his side of the table, out of her reach, and then he pushed it to the edge of the table and took his hand off it. He left it alone, like an outcast, on the far edge of the table. He shook his head at her.

"I'm not going to kill you," he said. "I won't. And..." He left his words hanging in the air. He pushed himself up from his chair and started to walk off—toward the bedroom he was calling his own for this last night that they would stay there—but he stopped just behind Carol's chair. "And I won't let anyone else, either," he added.

 _And Carol believed him._

"We'll move on tomorrow," he said. "We'll go to Terminus."

 _Terminus. The very name told Carol it was the end of the line._

At least, it was the end of the line for her.

They would go together to the place and then Carol would accept her fate for good this time. She would leave him there, in the safe location that Terminus promised to be, and she would move on. There was nothing there for her. She wasn't fit to live there anyway. She wasn't sure, anymore, if she could even be part of a community.

The things that she had done were things that nobody else would understand. They were things that nobody _could_ understand. Carol barely understood them herself. And she wouldn't ask Tyreese to keep her secrets.

There was no need for Carol to go to Terminus because, if it was the Paradise that it promised to be, she would be cast out again. Anywhere she went, she would be cast out.

 _There was no grace for the fallen._


	6. The Actress

**AN: Here's another chapter.**

 **This one has discussion of some of Morgan's ideas, Carol's feelings about Daryl, and her "relationship" with Tobin.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think.**

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A new location.

 _A new life._

Nobody knew her here. Nobody knew her. They'd hardly even known her before, but they knew her even less now. They knew her even less here.

Tyreese was gone, like so many others, and he took her secrets to his grave with him. At the gates of Alexandria, Carol tried to leave her old self like shedding a skin. This world was different. This life was different.

 _Except none of it was real_.

It was a mirage of peace in the middle of chaos.

Carol played dress up. She played house. She cleaned and she cooked and she baked. She smiled and she swapped stories—false stories filled with things that didn't matter any longer—with the women that reminded her of the well-meaning and clueless wives that she'd met at events that Ed had dragged her to.

But deep down inside, it was all still there and it was stirring around.

When there was trouble? When they needed her? She responded like Clark Kent ducking into a phone booth and stepping out as an unknown entity that would take care of things and then slip away, as quietly as possible, to try to lose herself again in the monotony of things and the sweet simplicity of the character she was trying to create.

She longed for a new life. She longed for a "do over" and a "fresh start". She knew that the nine lives she claimed to have were a lie. They were a fabrication, just like the new self that she was trying desperately to create out of floral sweaters and baking flour. They let her pretend that she could leave parts of herself behind. They let her pretend that she could put immeasurable distance between herself and those parts of her that she wanted to leave somewhere in the past.

But every fabrication eventually fell apart and the reason it was created—usually to make _someone_ feel better than the truth would—was always in vain because the crumbling of the façade only left behind harsh reality tinged with traces of deception.

The nine lives—an idea of almost endless regeneration and a brand of immortality—had been created to make _him_ feel better. She was almost immortal, in one form or another. And for a man that so feared loss, it brought him comfort.

The new self—the idea that she could strip herself of all the pieces that kept her awake at night—was to make _her_ feel better.

But _he_ could see through it and it reminded Carol that it was all just a show. It was a performance. None of it was real. She was still the same person she'd always been. She was _collecting_ pieces, but she could never really leave any of them behind. She never became a new self. She simply put layers on top of her old self—and every self that she'd ever been before.

Carol _feared_ who she'd become. And she feared, more than who she'd become, who she _might_ become. Who she might _have_ to become.

Morgan was right. At least, he was partially right. All life _was_ precious once upon a time. Now it seemed like most people had succumbed to madness. Killing wasn't something that Carol took lightly. Not at all. She didn't do it for sport and she didn't do it because it gave it her some kind of rush. It made her sick. It made her feel like her very _soul_ was ill. Every person she had to kill—because she never felt that she'd killed when it hadn't been necessary for some reason or another—was like a weight pressing down on her. Each death made her feel heavier. It made her feel strained and zapped and foreign to herself.

Life was precious, but it couldn't always be preserved. And with each person she had to kill, Carol felt a little of her own life draining away from her.

Alexandria offered her the chance to at least _pretend_ that none of the things she wanted to escape were even there for her to run from. It offered the chance for a new start. A clean slate.

 _At least in the eyes of most people._

Carol avoided Daryl. More than anyone else—no matter what the rest of them knew about her—she avoided Daryl. He was the only one who looked at her like he was concerned. He was the only one who looked at her like he was _confused_. Just catching a glance from him, his brow furrowed from questions that he didn't ask and she didn't want to answer, reminded her that none of it was real and he was trying to figure out, maybe because he cared more than anyone else—maybe because he _cared_ —exactly what she was doing. He was trying to figure out if _she_ even knew what she was doing.

She couldn't face him. If she did? She would have to explain herself. And she couldn't explain herself.

He was dealing with enough. The same world that was taking its toll on her was taking its toll on him. He still hadn't recovered from Beth's death. He'd never told Carol, in detail, what happened while he was on the road with Beth, just as she'd never told him what happened when she was with Tyreese, but Carol knew that it had affected him. Losing Beth had affected him.

It was another senseless death. It was the loss of another person that he'd bothered to care about. It was proof that nothing was forever—except maybe Carol who he seemed to believe would always, somehow, _live_.

Daryl was dealing with enough. He had enough feelings to sort through for himself. He didn't need the added weight of carrying around everything that was weighing Carol down. She wasn't going to burden him with her problems. She told herself that avoiding him, and thus avoiding talking about her feelings, was for _his_ good, but really it was just as much for her own good. Running from her problems, at the moment, felt like the only thing that she could do.

 _That's why she took Tobin the cookies._

She knew what she was doing when she was baking them. She asked herself, more than once, if it was right to do it—to toy with his emotions when he had no idea what who she really was or what was going on with her—but in the end what she needed had won out over any moral stirring that might have told her that it was better to leave the man alone. She'd baked the cookies and she'd taken them to him. She'd flirted with him—responding finally to his more than numerous attempts to flirt with her—and then she'd questioned herself again as she'd walked back to the house that she was temporarily calling home.

She didn't feel anything for Tobin, and it wasn't fair to let him feel for her, but she needed something from him even if she wasn't entirely sure what it was.

Out for a walk in the middle of the night, smoking cigarettes she didn't want and wishing that her mind would just be still for a moment, Carol finally figured out what she was seeking from the man.

He was up late too. His mind, like her own, wouldn't let him sleep. The thoughts, though, that no doubt circled through his brain were probably very different than her own. She'd joined him on the step, offered him her cigarette to finish, and she'd listened to him.

In his words there was still so much _innocence_ for this world. In the fear he expressed—fear for his own death and his inability to act against threats made to them—there was so much _innocence_. He was, very much unlike Carol and her seasoned companions, still so naïve to everything around them. He was sheltered. He'd been protected. He feared what he couldn't do when Carol feared what she _could_ do. And in her? He saw only what she wanted him to see. He saw only the _good_.

In her he could see nothing more than a strong woman—even if she doubted her own strength just by virtue of the almost suffocating pain in her chest that she now considered permanent—that had the potential to be _normal._ Even in the tone of his voice when he addressed her, Carol could _hear_ the image that he must have of her. She could almost _see_ the potential that he saw in her.

 _She could be a housewife. She could be a "hello, honey, how was your day?" kind of wife. She could be a mother and a friend and the maker of pot roasts and cookies. A true June Cleaver in a world full of walking, rotting corpses and people gone mad._

 _She could be exactly what she was pretending to be._

And in his kiss, she felt his hope for something like that. She felt his belief that this could be some kind of simple and sweet courtship leading to a domestic bliss that didn't truly exist any longer. She could see, in his eyes, the twinkle of excitement over the fact that such a simple _dream_ had a chance of becoming real.

 _He believed the fantasy._

And his concern for life was very real—and so very different than Carol's normal, daily concerns had become.

 _What Carol needed from him was the fantasy that he believed to be truth._

She'd tried, too, to lose herself in that fantasy—like maybe having Tobin to play along would make her performance more _truth_ somehow—but immediately she'd regretted it. No matter how many actors she got involved in the play, the fact remained that it was still fiction.

And, worse than that, she knew it was fiction but Tobin didn't.

He thought he loved her. He thought she loved him, or at least that she might someday. What he didn't realize was that he couldn't love her. He couldn't ever truly love her because he didn't _know_ her. What he loved, or what he thought he loved, was merely an illusion. He loved the person she created and, more specifically, he loved the person that he thought that fictional character might become with enough time and patience.

And Carol knew that she didn't love him. She couldn't. And she was honest enough with herself, though she didn't give her feelings voice, that she could admit that she never would. He was a good man. He was a kind man. And, in a lot of ways, he was everything she might have wanted in a man.

 _Before_.

But it was too late. She didn't love him. She couldn't love him. She already loved someone else.

And every time she saw Daryl, she was reminded of that. She couldn't love Tobin because, much without her permission, her heart already belonged to someone else.

Someone who looked at her with even more confusion now because he _knew_ her—whether or not he loved her—and he couldn't figure out what she might be doing with Tobin any more than he could figure out what she was doing handing out cookies and casseroles to people who hardly even seemed like they could be real in this world.

Except she couldn't love him either. She couldn't allow herself to love him. Or, even if she couldn't stop such a thing that was already in full swing, she couldn't allow herself to act on it. Because loving him would mean that she would have to do whatever was necessary to _defend_ him. She would have to _protect_ him. Sooner or later, the odds wouldn't be in his favor and she would have to _fight_ for him. She'd have to _kill_ for him. Directly or indirectly. _Again_.

And the self that she was trying to create—the new life that she wanted desperately and that could never be—would crumble. It would be reduced to ashes. She would have to admit that she could never really come back from everything that she'd seen and everything that she'd done. She'd have to face herself—as the monster that she often believed herself to be—and she'd have to face the person that she could become, if she wasn't already the worst version of herself that she could possibly be.

Morgan was right. All life was precious. She'd already taken too many. Her love would only force her to take more.

If she stayed, eventually the charade would be over. Eventually she'd have to tell Tobin the truth. Eventually she would hurt him. The weight of everything would be too much. She would have to tell Daryl the truth—she would have to hope that he could forgive her for being the monster that she felt herself to be most of the time.

And she'd have to kill, becoming more and more the person that she didn't want to be—a person that she hardly recognized.

There was only one thing that she could do. It was something she should've done long ago.

 _She had to go._


	7. The Immortal

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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She left to keep from killing. She left to avoid feeling like she had to add even one more number to her ever-increasing body count.

Alone, truly alone, there was no one to kill. There was no reason to kill.

Carol left a letter to Tobin. He wouldn't understand. Even when he read the words that she left for him, he wouldn't understand them. He believed too much of the fantasy. He believed that she loved him. He could actually believe that somewhere, somehow, there was some kind of idealistic future for them. It was a product of the sheltered life that Alexandria had created for him and for the others. It had protected them too long from the harsh realities of the world as it was now. He wouldn't understand because he didn't understand. It was as simple as that. He didn't understand the world and the things that it could do to someone—the things that it could make someone do.

But Daryl would understand.

Because she needed him to understand.

Just like she understood the things that he simply needed her to understand.

Without words. Without explanation. He would understand. It was something she needed to do. It was something she had to do.

She had to leave. She had to start a new life. She had to seek a new beginning, alone, where she had no one to love. No one to protect.

She didn't want to have to kill for anyone and, what might possibly be worse, she didn't want to be the reason that anyone else had to kill. She didn't want to be the reason that anyone else felt the suffocating heaviness in their chest that was beginning to feel normal to her.

Yet she'd barely begun to run before she'd already been forced to kill again. She was barely far enough away from Alexandria for them not to hear the gunfire when the men stopped her flight. If it had been only her—just her single, insignificant life hanging in the balance—she might have let the men go with their lives. She might have simply let them do whatever they pleased with her as long as they promised her the sweet and permanent release of death. But they were too close to Alexandria. They were too close to everyone she loved—everyone she still loved—and they wouldn't accept the story that she made up for them. They already knew about Alexandria. They already suspected that she was coming from the community. Their intentions were clear. When they killed her, they'd just go on to Alexandria to kill again. They'd start a slaughter of her family that, surely, someone else would soon come to finish. So she'd done the only thing that she could do. She'd killed them. She'd eliminated one more threat.

And not being able to come through the encounter entirely without injury, she'd gone on, alone, to put distance between herself and the loved ones that she was trying to leave behind. The distance would be the only thing that would truly separate her from them. It would be the only thing that would keep her from feeling responsible for them any longer.

 _Nancy_.

Maybe she could start her new life as unknown and inconsequential as Nancy. A name and a story pulled out of thin air. As she felt her body's energy waning, though, and she'd realized that she was growing weaker and a little lightheaded from the blood loss, she'd thought that maybe—instead of starting a new life at all—she might simply let go of them altogether. Every life that she'd collected inside of her, she might simply let go.

If she had nine lives, maybe she'd finally spent them all. The end of the ninth had finally come and she would simply slip away. There would be no new life. There would be no new start.

There would be nothing else for her.

She hadn't expected Morgan to come. She had left explicit instruction that no one was to come looking for her. And, even if she imagined that someone might try to go against her wishes, it honestly wasn't Morgan that she expected to find her curled up in a doorway where she'd chosen to rest—for however long her rest might last. Yet there he was. And just as he'd believed that all life was precious before, he believed it now. He insisted on trying to save Carol, whatever their differences might be when it came to the things that one simply had to do these days, and she would let him have that.

She would let him save her life. She'd let him see her off to a new one.

But what she wouldn't do was return with him to the place that she'd left behind. He tried to argue with her, which she'd suspected that he might, but she wasn't going to give into him. She'd left purposefully. She'd cast herself out as surely as Rick had cast her out before. This time she wasn't returning.

"Daryl would have come."

A simple statement, really. A purposeful statement for Morgan. It wasn't a name chosen at random. His every word was strategic. He knew that Rick had cast her out. He'd been sure to mention that Rick had come to look for her—that he'd had to turn back. His decision to mention Daryl wasn't simply a matter of chance. Carol was smart enough to know that and, more than likely, Morgan knew that she knew what he was trying to do. Most of them knew—whether or not any of them put voice to it—the love that Carol felt for Daryl and, if she wasn't reaching too much, of the love that she suspected that Daryl felt for her. Daryl was off, taking care of things that he needed to take care of—things that Carol would understand. But if he'd known that Carol had left Alexandria? If he'd been there to learn of the words that she'd written bidding Tobin and anyone else farewell? He'd have come looking for her.

Morgan was sure to remind Carol of that.

It was an effort to appeal to her emotions. She hadn't left for cruelty, though. She hadn't left because of any shortage of compassion or feeling for those that she'd left behind Alexandria's walls. Quite on the contrary. She'd left because she simply loved _too much_.

And sooner or later, love got you killed or it made you kill. These days there was no avoiding it.

She hadn't left without thinking about Daryl at all. There was very little that she did without thinking about Daryl.

If she were going to die?

It would be better for Daryl if she were to do it far away from him. It would be better if she did it out here, alone, where he never had to know the truth of it. Each death was harder on him than the one before simply because the deaths were stacking up. They learned to love one another just to lose each other. That was the way of the world these days. The weight of _who_ it was that died pressed down on Daryl as it would on anyone. But beyond that, he was moved simply by the fact that the deaths were so _unnecessary_. Everyone that they'd lost showed in his eyes. Each death pushed him somewhere deeper into his own darkness.

Carol, it seemed, he believed to be _immortal_. He believed her to be someone that he couldn't lose—at least not through death. This way? She wouldn't have to kill for her love of him. And he wouldn't have to see her die for it either.

She would be, forever, immortal in his mind's eye—forever out of his reach, but forever out of the reach of others as well. Untouchable.

She wouldn't return with Morgan. She wouldn't be persuaded to return and she wasn't going to let him force her to return against her will. His words weren't going to change her mind, just as she was sure that her words had never really changed his.

She had chosen to be alone.

And again, when she could, she'd left.

As soon as the fight had begun, Carol knew that she'd lost it. The man that she'd thought she left dead was too much for her, especially in her weakened state. And once he pulled the gun on her, there was no reason to even continue to try. Disarmed she didn't stand a chance against him. She wasn't sure she wanted to continue to fight anyway.

She was tired. Her heart was heavy and her mind was troubled. And now that she'd left everyone behind, there was really nothing left to fight for.

The first bullet ripped into her. With the piercing agony, it brought a strange peace that Carol hadn't been expecting at all when it was her time to die. There was almost a rush of warmth through her body—a warmth entirely different than the burning pain of her injuries. The bullet, it seemed, had carried with it something that stirred up a strange sensation of hope in Carol's soul. Hope that everything she'd once deeply believed in would turn out to be true.

She'd slip into the darkness—into a final life that was so very different than any one that she'd known before—and she'd find forgiveness. She'd find peace. And, if her God was all that she'd trusted him to be, maybe she'd find Sophia. Her arms ached, bullet wound ignored for the moment that her daughter's face was just there where she could see it—called up to memory—for the feeling of holding Sophia once more.

The second bullet ripped into her. Carol tolerated it because she had no choice otherwise. She accepted it as a means to an end. He asked her if she could really believe that she'd suffered enough and she'd answered him as honestly as she could.

"Probably not."

She probably deserved to suffer so much more than she'd already suffered. After all, Ed had always told her that she'd deserved "more than what she got" and she was, these days, by far a much worse person than she'd been when she'd been married to Ed. She probably deserved a great deal more than what she'd gotten out of this life—but for now she'd simply hope for the coming peace.

When he'd tried to leave her like that—open to either be torn apart by the dead or to somehow keep on living—Carol had heckled the man with the hope that his anger would push him to dispatch one final bullet that would end it all for her.

She would no longer be immortal. All the lives would be spent.

But Morgan's shower of gunfire had come before a third bullet from the man who wanted Carol dead. And for a moment, not all life was precious and Morgan came to understand her.

"Just let me go."

"It's not your time."

According to Morgan, and he was probably right, it wasn't Carol's time to go. This wasn't the end of it all. She wasn't going to slip away for good now. He was going to help her. He was going to find someone to help her. He was going to keep her there because it wasn't her time to go. And when someone—some almost mythical person—appeared to offer the help he promised to find, it seemed that Morgan must be right. Carol wouldn't die today. Her lives weren't spent.

Her time would come, because she wasn't truly immortal, but it wouldn't be today.

Today she would keep living.

Carol didn't know, though, what she had left to give to this life. She didn't know what she had left to give to Morgan or to anyone else. She couldn't imagine, from here, where she had left to go. She couldn't fathom what kind of life she might even still have left inside her after everything else that she'd been through.

But Morgan was going to see to it that she found out. And Carol really had relatively little choice or say in the matter.

Her life, it seemed, would go on. She was still immortal.


	8. The Woman Who Stayed

**AN: Here we go, another chapter her. Of course we're now completely outside the realm of the show. There's one more chapter to go.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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She floated in a sea of darkness and, at times, that darkness had been pierced by light and sound and, more often than not, troubled memory. The fever had been, so she'd heard as she'd floated in and out of reality, a result of the infection that had been unavoidable. By the time that they'd gotten to the place they'd told her would be where she was saved—a place she'd never seen because she'd never opened her eyes until she was in a room that was as unremarkable as any other room that she'd ever been in before—Carol had started to doubt that she'd survive. Morgan's determination to keep her alive would only get them so far. She hadn't been told what they'd given her that made her slip into the deepest sleep that she could ever recall—a sleep that, at the same time she couldn't remember at all—but she'd been happy for it. It had taken her, for a short while or a long while because she wasn't certain which, entirely away from herself. And when she'd woken from it, she'd still felt somewhat outside of herself.

It was the fever that kept her outside of herself. She didn't know how many days it burned through her. She didn't know how long they gave her antibiotics that they said would make it subside. She didn't know how many times she woke, just slightly, to the feeling of a cold rag on her face that grew hot almost immediately and to accept the water and salty liquid that was dripped into her mouth.

But eventually it must have started to fade, just as the voices had promised that it would. Carol woke, with something of a start, as soon as the chilled rag was placed on her forehead. Immediately she sunk back and relaxed because she recognized the sensation.

If she were to open her eyes, Morgan would be there. He would be sitting there, that same furrowed brow and same concerned look as always. If she kept her eyes open long enough for him to notice, he'd smile at her. The smile was always genuine. He'd say some words—those varied, but not much. Always he said something about the same. Always he welcomed her back. Always he reminded her that he was there. That everything was going to be fine. That she was going to be fine.

She wasn't going to die. He wasn't going to let her.

And every time, Carol closed her eyes again without responding to his words. She didn't have anything to say to him. She didn't need to say anything to him because, even without word from her, he'd continue to put the cool rags on her face. He'd continue to change the bandages—or have someone else to do it for him—and he'd continue to wait until the next time that she decided to keep her eyes open long enough to receive his smile and his promises that she was alive.

The fever was gone, or it was very close to it. Carol's head felt clearer. Even as she lie there, with her eyes still closed, her brain seemed to be working better. She didn't feel as much like she was floating. She didn't feel like she was on the verge of drowning. She could think back through the cloudy events of the past few days—or weeks or months, because there was no real timeline for things in her mind—and she could recall moments with sharper details than she'd been able to before.

They'd removed the bullets. They'd sewn up wounds and done their best to treat them. They'd given her things—medicine and fluids more than likely—intravenously because she remembered the muffled sounds of someone warning her about needles that she couldn't feel over the fog of pain that had become her very existence. They'd treated the infection and they'd eventually pushed away the fever.

Wherever they were, they were safe here. At least, they were safe as long as they could be—as long as they were safe anywhere.

And wherever they were? This was where Carol would stay. She knew that when she opened her eyes to Morgan, when she let him see that the fever was gone and that her mind was returning to her, he was going to insist that they go. He was going to insist that they return to the place that she'd left. She wasn't going with Morgan. Wherever she was, this was where she would stay. This was where she'd start her new life, whatever it may hold.

Before she even opened her eyes, Carol set her resolve.

Immediately upon cracking her eyelids open, Carol closed them again. It was daylight. The room had windows. It must because the brightness was blinding. She cracked them open again and immediately closed them once more because of the pain that it caused in her head when the light got in. She repeated the action a few times, fluttering her eyelids, and her eyes adjusted slowly to the light.

Morgan wasn't there. Nobody was. At least, not directly in her field of vision. Carol turned her head slightly and winced at the stiffness in her neck. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd moved, but her body was feeling the effects of being still too long. She took a quick mental inventory of her body. There was pain, but there was enough of it that it seemed to simply be _generalized_. She couldn't sort out one ache from another. It all blended together inside of her.

"You're awake," she heard coming from the opposite side of the room from which she was facing. Those were Morgan's words—at least some of them—but she wasn't hearing them in Morgan's voice. Immediately she doubted the fever was as gone as she thought it had been. Maybe she had simply spent so much time drowning in it that she'd started to think the feeling was normal. What she heard now was Daryl's voice.

 _Gruff, scratchy, barking out a little in the hoarseness of not being used as much as some people chose to use their voice, scarred with years of smoking more than he should._

 _She knew the voice, now, as well as she knew her own and her mind could simply reproduce it on a whim._

"Hey—you're awake," he repeated.

Carol closed her eyes once more. She tried to clear her head. She heard the sound of Morgan crossing the room. She felt the rag being removed from her forehead. She heard the sound of water dropping into water. Her mind _felt_ clear. She felt the cold on her face as the rag was replaced. She felt the touch of fingertips on her face and neck as they searched out evidence of the fever.

"Hey—can you open your eyes again? Fever—it's passin'. Broke again an hour ago."

Carol smiled to herself. At once she felt a swelling in her chest and an ache in her throat. His voice. It was still there. The last lingering effect of the fever, perhaps, since he'd been in more than one of her troubled dreams. But he was still there. His voice was staying with her.

 _She'd be sorry for it to go. It was the last thing she had of him. And she wouldn't return with Morgan, so she wouldn't hear it again when the fever had faded entirely._

"Carol?" He said. "Open your eyes. Come on—you gotta stay with me for a bit. At least a little while. Been—been waitin' on you a while now."

Carol didn't open her eyes. She was sure that opening her eyes would break whatever lingering spell was still intact. Seeing Morgan's face there with his brow furrowed, or even with the broad smile he'd given her so often, would break the spell.

"How long?" Carol asked, swallowing against the lump in her throat. "How long have—you been waiting? For me?"

There was silence. It was a long silence. She heard the water dropping. The rag was replaced. The fingertips took their trip again around her neck and face. They stopped, on her face, and they spread out. They cupped her cheek. Without thinking about it, Carol leaned her face into the fingertips and moved enough to brush her skin against the gentle touch.

It wasn't Daryl, but she'd accept the fantasy for a moment. Morgan would forgive her later.

"Long time," Daryl said. The fingers moved just enough to affectionately stroke her cheek where she'd leaned into them. "Come on—look at me."

Carol sighed and swallowed again. She accepted things for what they were, and for what they'd more than likely be, and she finally did open her eyes.

He was sitting there. And he did smile at her. But it wasn't the same smile that she'd seen before. It wasn't Morgan's display of almost all of his teeth in an effort to make her feel more positive about a possibly hopeless situation. The smile was the familiar half-smile, the sideways smirk, that Daryl gave her when she amused him. It blossomed, though, into a fuller smile than she thought she'd ever seen from him before. She was aware, too, that he hadn't moved his hand from her face.

Immediately she was also aware that he was wearing, on the other arm, a white sling. There was no immediate sign of injury, but the sling was there.

"Good to see your eyes," he said.

Carol was still somewhat in shock. Was he really there? Was this some kind of dream? Her heart beat faster and harder in her chest. She couldn't help but smile, though. Dream or not, it was the happiest she'd felt in a while.

"Can't see yours," she said. She swallowed again when he immediately looked concerned. "You need a haircut." The smile immediately bled back over his face again.

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe you could—do that for me?"

Carol tested, for her own curiosity, her muscles. She could move, but she could also feel that there was some pain in her right side, when she tried to shift her limbs, that went beyond the stiffness.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"Not right away, maybe," he said. "Good to have you back."

In a wash of realization that almost made her stomach churn from being so much at once, Carol realized this couldn't be a dream. It couldn't be a fever induced vision. There was too much interaction. There was too much reality here. She furrowed her brow at him.

"How did you?" She asked, but she didn't finish.

He sucked in a breath and his features went a little dark.

"Negan found our group," Daryl said. He shook his head.

"He let you go?" Carol asked.

"Not all of us," Daryl said. He shook his head again. "Doesn't matter right now. We went to Hilltop. Took Maggie. I—uh—needed a little help. We stayed a couple days. Four? Five? Maybe more. Maybe less—lost track of the time, honestly. Morgan showed up with Heath. Said he'd been back to Alexandria. Said he was lookin'—for _me_. Told me you were here. Said you could—use a hand. Thought you might like to see me."

Daryl stopped talking. Carol watched as his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. He pulled his hand away from her and he looked toward the floor for a moment, bringing his fingertips to his mouth to gnaw on in the manner that he usually did when he was thinking something through.

"Wanted to see you," he said. "Guess he knew...maybe I could use a hand too." Daryl looked back at her. "Unless—you wanted to see someone else? Could make a run back to Alexandria. Once you're able to move—could take you back there."

Carol shook her head at him.

"I don't want to see anyone else," she assured him. "But Morgan should've told you. I'm not going back to Alexandria, Daryl. I'm—staying here." She glanced around her. She didn't have any idea where "here" actually was. She didn't know anything, at the moment, beyond the walls of the bedroom in which she found herself. "Wherever here is," she added.

Daryl sucked in a breath.

"Kingdom," he said. "Three days travel from Alexandria. Less if you're makin' good time."

Carol gently nodded her acceptance of the information.

"I'm staying," she repeated.

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"Yeah," he said. "I heard ya. Good thing, then. Because—I'm stayin' too. If you'll have me. Told 'em I was waiting to see what you said. See if you were gonna...stay around. But the fever's gone. Out of the woods now. Won't be long and you'll be on your feet. Back to makin' your own decisions."

Carol smiled to herself. There was something _different_ in his voice. There was something different, too, in the way that he kept looking at her and smiling—an almost embarrassed half smile—and then looking nervously away. She'd seen it before, but never quite like this. And, even if she didn't want to be presumptuous, she thought that he'd been honest about maybe needing a hand.

Carol moved the arm that she felt confident moving and reached for Daryl's hand. She caught it and he let her hold it, even though he was looking at his own hand like he wasn't fully sure that it was his anymore.

"I'm going to stay," Carol said. "Here. _With you_."


	9. The Queen

**AN: Here we are, the last chapter to this one.**

 **I hope that you enjoyed. A special thanks to Buttercup for the support. I can always count on you to read lady, no matter what! I hope you enjoy the last chapter too.**

 **Let me know what you think!**

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As the tiger bounded toward her, Carol stopped her steps and braced herself for the impact. Though she slowed her body, the animal's feet slid on the smooth floor and she wasn't able to reach a complete stop before she bumped into Carol's legs. To attest to the fact that she had fully healed beyond the slight limp that made itself noticeable every now and again—and particularly after a full day of work—Carol's legs were able to hold against the pressure of the collision. She laughed to herself and dropped her hand, just as the tiger wanted, to scratch at the fur on her head.

"Shiva is never unhappy to see you," Ezekial said, his booming voice echoing slightly around the room.

"And I'm never unhappy to see her," Carol responded. Now that Shiva's almost kitten-like playfulness was calmed, Carol started her steps again and finished crossing the span of floor that separated her from the large table where Ezekial was sitting. As she approached, the man stood and bowed forward gently before smiling at her and offering his hand.

"Carol?" He asked, as though he didn't know her as well as she knew him.

"Ezekial," she responded, smiling at him. Most of the people in the Kingdom called the man "King," but Carol only used the title to refer to him when speaking to other people. She never directly addressed him with it. Instead, in front of those who might expect her to do so, she called him "Your Majesty". And, though she never explained herself to anyone, not even Ezekial who never really asked, she had her reasons for it.

"You're looking well today," he said.

"I've been enjoying the sunshine," Carol responded.

And she had. She'd enjoyed the sunshine while she'd worked out in the fields of the Kingdom. The jobs that she took there varied from day to day and were always up to her choosing. She went mostly where she was needed, but there were some days where she chose, instead, to go where _she_ needed to go.

 _Her life, in the Kingdom, was unlike any of the lives that she had known before. For better or for worse, in all possible meanings of the phrase, it would be the last of her lives. It wasn't perfect, but she was satisfied and content. And those were, in her opinion, the characteristics of the best kind of life that she could hope for._

Everything these days happened quickly. What once took months could now happen in the matter of a few days. There was little time for dawdling. As soon as she'd begun to really heal, Carol had been faced with deciding, for once and for all, if she wanted to return to Alexandria or if she might want to go to the Hilltop. The communities were all at war, though she'd been unaware of the brunt of it until then, against Negan and his so-called Saviors. At the time that she was given all the information that she needed, Rick was still the leader of Alexandria and was trying desperately to hold the place against Negan's occasional attacks that were brought on by the fact that they refused to play by his rules. Maggie, she learned, was widowed—Glenn falling victim to Negan's cruelty—and had taken a place at the Hilltop. Now Carol knew that the woman enjoyed a position of particular power there—something she'd never have known in Alexandria.

Realizing that her location in the Kingdom allowed her enough proximity to those that she loved to avoid losing contact with them entirely, but also allowed her enough distance from them that she didn't feel personally responsible for each of them in this world, Carol had chosen to remain at the Kingdom.

The Kingdom, too, in this troubled time was choosing to go to war against the tyrannical Negan. Rick had come requesting assistance from Ezekial—the King, as they called him—and he'd made the decision that they couldn't stand idly by and let others be destroyed by Negan. If they did, as the law of nature and man alike seemed to dictate, it would eventually be their turn. Instead, the Kingdom would fight and, for good, they would all eliminate the threat together.

 _Until there was another threat._

Carol had never meant to really draw attention to herself.

She'd had the intention of living a quiet life in the Kingdom. She'd work and contribute, as everyone else did, but she wouldn't be anything beyond another body that helped to put food on everyone's tables. She didn't want a position of power. She didn't want to be the person that made decisions affecting the lives of others. She didn't want, any longer, to be anything like the woman that she'd felt she had once started to become.

She had never actually meant to say anything to Ezekial about the need to realistically accept that there would always be other threats and other dangers to face.

But the words got away from her.

And Ezekial heard her. He didn't just hear the words that she spoke, either. He _listened_.

And then he called her into his chambers to talk with him in private. She'd gone, swallowing back her fear, half believing that he might cast her out of the place. The other half of her assumed he was just going to scold her for something that he might have seen as insolence.

Instead, he'd asked her something she hadn't expected to have to answer, at least not with actual words.

 _Who did she want to be? Within the Kingdom—who did she want to become?_

At the time, Carol had found the question impossible to answer. She'd never been asked, before, who she _wanted_ to be. Each of her lives—each transformation of her _being_ —had been chosen for her by someone else or by fate if nothing more. So, instead of being able to give the man a direct answer, she simply told him who she did _not_ want to be. Ezekial had listened to her, he'd accepted what she'd said, and then he'd told her the decision that he'd made—asking her if it was a role that she was willing to accept.

" _Behind every great man," he said, "they say there is a woman who helps him find his greatness. Helps him keep his greatness. There is a woman who is his advisor. His greatest confident. His greatest supporter and his harshest critic. Behind every King, so there is a Queen who keeps his throne for him. Will you be my Queen?"_

At first Carol had been taken aback by his proposal. She'd misinterpreted it as some offer of marriage or something of the like and she'd stammered out the best reminder that she could that she was already married, unofficially—at least under Kingdom law—to Daryl. She'd promised to take his hand as soon as the war was over and everything was returned to what they were promised would be a fairly steady state of productivity and calm.

Ezekial had calmed her fears quickly, though, and had even laughed quietly at her misinterpretation of his request—or perhaps he'd been laughing at his poor presentation of it. He'd explained that what he'd meant was something that he thought would line up fairly well with what she wanted—eliminating some of the things that she'd expressed that she absolutely wanted to avoid.

He wanted her to be his conscience. He wanted her to be a voice of reason. He wanted her to be the person who heard everything he heard, but with different ears. He wanted her to hash things out with him—to help him make the best decisions that he could for all the people of the kingdom. And he wanted her to do it from a position of power and respectability, but only as second in command. Since the people of the Kingdom took him as their King, he was a figurehead for the power that, really, belonged to all of them. They liked that. They needed that. They wanted someone to stand as the voice for them all. Carol, then, would be his _Queen_. She would help him. She would rule beside him. But he would always be there to be the one that was, at least as far as everyone was concerned, _responsible_ for the decisions made.

She would only rule alone in his absence. And even then, he would declare that her voice was his voice. He was, still, responsible.

Carol knew that he wasn't really a king at all. She suspected, even, that until the fall of the world he'd never been a particularly powerful man. She believed that Shiva was devoted to him for his kindness, and perhaps for something more that she could sense about him, but she didn't believe that he somehow held a power that made him respected by both man and beast.

Ezekial confirmed her suspicions.

And he'd pointed out to her that she, more than anyone else there, seemed able to see past the fairy tale of it all. She was able to see past what she wanted to see and to admit that, beyond their gates, there was much that existed that was nothing short of a nightmare. She was able to remind even him, because sometimes he almost forgot, that they must never think that the fairy tale was real.

Chaos was only moments away. Only one bad decision stood between them and collapse.

And Negan wasn't the only threat. He wasn't the last threat. There would be others. From now until the end of time, there would always be new threats.

That was human nature.

Carol hadn't accepted his proposal immediately. She'd put it off, insisting that she wasn't healed enough to think of taking any position at all that might pose any challenge, and he'd accepted that she might want to sleep on it a night or two. Instead of sleeping on it, though, she'd hashed over it with Daryl for two nights straight until Daryl had finally told her that he thought it was something she should consider—especially since he felt like her arguments against it weren't really even convincing her.

And she'd sat, in Ezekial's place, when he'd gone out with the people of the Kingdom to fight against Negan. She'd relinquished, happily, the position of absolute power over the community as soon as he'd returned, and she'd celebrated with everyone else that Negan was now under lock and key—under Rick and Michonne's guard—in Alexandria where he would remain.

In the months that had passed, Carol had aided Ezekial in making a great number of decisions. Thanks to her suggestions, and some relationships that she still held dear to her heart, they maintained very close ties with the Hilltop and with Alexandria both. As a larger community, and one that produced a little more than either of the other two in food products, she'd helped to negotiate a trade triangle that had all three locations getting exactly what they lacked in exchange for what they had in abundance. They had reached out to new people and brought them in and they were working with the other communities to create safe-zones that were clear of Walkers and Walker threats.

They were working toward a better world, even if it only extended as far as the three communities they knew about, and Carol was a part of that. She was a big part of that.

And, so far, she hadn't had to kill again to do it. She'd made peace with the fact, though, that one day she might be called on again to do such a thing.

"My Queen, you _bring_ the sunshine," Ezekial said to Carol's comment about the nice weather that she'd been taking advantage of for the early part of the day. She smiled. Ezekial was a flatterer, but his antics never bothered her—they were never meant to do anything more than bring a smile to her face or to the faces of others.

Carol waved her hand toward one of the chairs near where Ezekial had been sitting and looking over a few disorderly pieces of paper.

"Do I need to sit?" She asked. "We need to talk?"

"We need to talk," Ezekial said, "but it'll be brief. At least for now. We'll discuss it in greater detail when I have more information."

Carol furrowed her brow at him. The man's forehead was wrinkled with enough concern that she knew that something was going on, even if he wasn't ready to discuss it yet.

"Trouble?" Carol asked.

"There may be," Ezekial said. "News came from the Hilltop today. There's been some kind of threat."

"Negan?" Carol asked. Ezekial shook his head.

"As far as I know, he's still in Alexandria," Ezekial said. "If he'd escaped, Rick would've sent word."

"The Saviors?" Carol asked.

Of Negan's group, most of the men had been killed. Those who hadn't been killed, along with the women and children, had been relocated to one of the three communities. Most of them had lived in Negan's compounds against their wills and they were more than pleased to be contributing members to the new society. However, that didn't mean that they weren't aware of the possibility that, one day, someone might decide to rise up and try on the old ways of the man who had once controlled them all.

Ezekial shook his head again.

"An outside threat," he said. "From what I know. Which isn't much at this point. Jonathan brought the news and he's requesting that I go. Maggie needs our help and I think it's best to at least hear what she's got to say before we make a decision about what we're going to do."

"Will Rick be there?" Carol asked.

"I'm sure that they sent someone to Alexandria when they sent Jonathan here," Ezekial said. "As soon as he's had something to eat, and I'm packed, I'll be riding out with him. I'll need you to sit in my absence."

Carol nodded.

"Will you take anyone with you?" She asked. "The roads are clear, but there's still safety in numbers."

Ezekial smiled slightly at her concern.

"Two riders," he said. "No more. I don't want to draw attention if we're being watched. Will you hold down things here? Handle the little disputes? Keep things in order?"

Carol smiled at him.

"You know I will," she assured him. "And—I'll put an extra guard on. Just to be sure."

He nodded.

"I think that might be best," he agreed. "I've got to get ready quickly. I don't want to put it off. Especially not knowing what level the threat might be at already."

"I'll let you get ready," Carol said, starting to leave. There was no need for drawn out farewells. "You'll find me when you're leaving?"

Ezekial nodded, his eyes thanking her more than his words could.

"Carol?" He said, getting her attention just as she started to walk away.

Carol looked at him.

"Take Shiva?" He asked, nodding toward the big cat that was rolling around on the floor and cooling her fur. Carol smiled and nodded her acceptance.

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"What the hell is she doin' here?" Daryl asked from where he was sitting, busy with some messy mechanical task he had spread out on a sheet that was covering half their floor, when Shiva strolled into the living room of the house that they'd moved into immediately after they'd said their official vows in front of the Kingdom's public and left the room that they'd shared in the "Palace". The living room was quite spacious, but it seemed much smaller when it accommodated the feline. Daryl wasn't quite as comfortable with the tiger as Carol was—but they tolerated one another.

"Ezekial's riding out," Carol said. "An outside threat at the Hilltop. Maggie sent for help."

"Rick going?" Daryl asked.

"More than likely," Carol said. "We'll know more when he gets back."

"Need me to ride out with him?" Daryl asked.

Carol shook her head.

"He said he's taking two men," Carol said. "He didn't mention you, so I'm guessing that he's already spoken to who he has in mind."

Daryl nodded his acceptance. He went when he was asked, but he didn't feel the need to prove himself by running off on every single trip outside the gates like he once had. Carol didn't say it to him, because he wouldn't have liked to hear the words even if they were true, but married life was mellowing Daryl Dixon, but always in a good way.

Daryl got up from his spot, abandoning his work for a moment, and stepped a dramatic half-circle around the tiger. He'd avoid her for a while, but they'd make friends again soon enough. By nightfall he'd have no problem shoving at the cat and insisting that she give up trying to get on the bed and kick him to the couch.

"You acting while he's gone?" Daryl asked, crossing the room to Carol.

She hummed at him.

"That alright with you?" She asked. He smiled at her.

"You don't ask me permission for anything," Daryl said. "And I know you already said you would."

"If you were really against it," Carol said, but she didn't finish.

Daryl hummed in the negative at her and shook his head. He seemed, actually, quite fond of the position that she'd taken within the Kingdom. He reached out a hand and caught her arm, curling his fingers over it. He tugged her gently and she came toward him, pressing herself against him. She accepted the kiss that he offered her and she smiled at the smirk that crossed his features.

"My _Queen_ ," he teased.

Carol smiled. She winked at him.

"My one and only _King_ ," she responded softly.


End file.
